This election cycle was disheartening. A government for the people and by the people was ripped to shreds, with all of the name calling, petty politics, gender discrimination and playing on immigration fears.

The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of this week's shooting, is one of the oldest black churches in the South. One of their early members organized a failed slave uprising in the 1820s, causing white Supremacists to burn it down, though it was later rebuilt. In the 1960s, it became a hub for civil rights organizers. Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the pastor and State Senator who was among the nine people killed in this week's shooting, was involved in social causes such as the fight for police body cameras. Growing up in Charleston, Reverend Carey Grady went to the Emanuel AME Church and knew Reverend Clementa Pinckney. Grady is the pastor at the Reid Chapel AME church in Columbia, South Carolina.

This weekend, as Black History Month comes to a close, those who visit Bethel AME Cathedral will have an opportunity to travel back to a time when a movement of freedom-loving Americans worked together to fight slavery.